Turberas

Conservation Biology
Our planet is a precious place. It is our home. It gives us shelter and food; without it we would be lost. And, are we talking good care of our home? Is it clean enough? If we analyze all the problems all over the world related to poor conservations practices, our answer is no.
Let’s think of our country: Costa Rica. The Tárcoles River is the most polluted water system inall Central America. Even though we have a great number of National Parks, some of them are about to be closed because there is no money to manage them. Our wildlife is also threatened because of habitat loss and over hunting of some species. Both these facts were published in the local newspapers recently.
What are we doing to help our world to be a better place to live in? We should start bycleaning up our close environment. Have you seen your classroom at 2:30 p.m., or the lawn areas at school after recess? It is a mess; if you can’t even clean what’s close to you, how do you expect to clean up your country? Your planet? Why don’t’ we try to be neat and clean everything we have around us. From now on the garbage goes in the trashcans, not on the floor, and what we can recycle in therecycling bin. That would be a very good start. Once we start cleaning up our surroundings, then we can proudly start to do something for our school, our country and of course our planet.
Our country is facing today many problems related to garbage.

We are not recycling, we throw a lot of garbage into the river systems and just think of the people that live in Tibás. The problem they are facingis very serious. It can lead to disease and even death. The government is trying to solve the problem, but, don’t you think all of us could help? How? Simply by recycling, throwing the garbage in special containers, and picking up all the trash we make. Not that difficult, isn’t it? Then how come we don’t even do that? What world is the one you want to live in?
We should start right away. Cleanup your room, your house, your desk, your classroom. After you clean up your surroundings, then start thinking how you can start cleaning up your country.
Conservation Biology is a new science. It has developed as an answer to all the current problems our planet is facing: habitat destruction, greenhouse effect, and mass extinctions. It has three main goals:
1- Document the full rang ofbiological diversity on earth
2- Investigate human impact on species, communities and ecosystems
3- To develop practical approaches to prevent the extinction of species, to maintain genetic variation within species and to protect and restore biological communities and their associated ecosystem functions.
The academic disciplines of population biology, taxonomy, ecology, and geneticsconstitute the core of conservation biology (Primack, 2002).

During the FT we will visit three different ecosystems.
1- Páramo → neotropical region located in between 11° North latitude and 8° South latitude.
2- Cloud Forest → (bosques de robles, bosque montano alto)
3- Peat bogs → (turberas) A type of wetland

Cordillera de Talamanca
“Es un gran anticlinal formado por rocassedimentarias marinas terciarias y vulcanitas de la misma edad (pero sin rasgos de volcanismo actual) y que yace sobre un núcleo de rocas profundas magmáticas del Mioceno. Arranca desde el Sur y el Este del Valle Central y se extiende en dirección N.O.- S.E. hasta la frontera con Panamá más allá de

la cual es conocida como Cordillera de Chiriquí. Ya inmediatamente al Sur de San José alcanza alturas demás de 2 400 m en la Fila Candelaria (Cerros de Escazú y Cedral) y sobrepasa los
3 000 m en varias cumbres más al S.E.: Cerros de la Muerte (Buenavista) 3 491 m, Urán 3 333 m, Cabécar 3 330 m, Kámuk 3 554 m y el Chirripó 3819 m, en el que Weyl encontró algunos rasgos de morfología glacial.
Hacia el Sur, la cordillera desciende por pequeños y empinados conos de deyección hacia el Valle...